


Stars, hide your fires

by lilith_morgana



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 11:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: He’sshiveringwith it, the kind of magic Gellert has sought all his life.





	1. Midwinter

**Author's Note:**

> So anyone who's ever read my ancient HP fics knows I can't resist bleak canon romances and angsty dynamics.

  
_Stars, hide your fires;_  
_Let not light see my black and deep desires._  
**Macbeth, Act 1**  
  
_The elder wand knows no loyalty except to strength._  
**\- JK Rowling**

* * *

 

 

They meet in a graveyard and it is, perhaps, ironic.

They meet in a graveyard and Albus Dumbledore is the most beautiful thing Gellert has seen in his life.  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
There is no beauty at Durmstrang.  
  
No, this is wrong. Its surroundings are _miraculously_ beautiful: the midnight sun, the deep-frozen lakes, the way the scant light in the long winters bend over their secrets up here. The shape his _lumos_ takes when he sends it dancing between the tall pines at midwinter. It’s a place for utter worship and darkest despair; it’s wasted on a school that is only interested in moulding servants from the dirt. They tell him Durmstrang shows tolerance for the dark arts and yet Gellert cannot fathom the reluctance with which his tutors treat the strongest, most desirable forms of magic.  
  
He has known from a very early age that the boundaries built by other people will never be enough for him, that they won’t hold him in place, never satisfy a mind or a heart like his. When he says this in the place claiming to be his home he is met with violence. At Durmstrang with silence, later with punishments.  
  
The old castle is set in its ways, shaped by a very particular sort of magician and steeped in a stoic, joyless form of magic that is efficient as Muggle armies but lacks a soul. The witches and wizards of Durmstrang do not burn, they are not _ignited_ with the fervent, frantic possibility of magic that storms through Gellert whenever he lets it, the gorgeous flood of strength that rushes through his blood and moves his bones.  
  
Magic is the greatest joy he has ever felt and he could cry when he thinks about it, how his professors subdue the core of it all, silence the roaring excitement in opening yourself up to the elements, allowing your body to carry out the deeds of the world. They want to teach him spells for repairing chairs when he could be altering the way the wind moves. They give him homework on Muggle electricity when he wants to understand how a curse can interfere with the human heart. He’s told to refine his bodily movements, arrange himself around the idea of martial arts while Europe prepares to go to yet another war around them.  
  
“I am _wasted_ on this!” he shouts at his Headmaster during his first year up in the north. “I can change the world!”  
  
They still have patience with him back then, he’s merely told to be quiet and learn how to stand in line. Like a feeble Muggle soldier marching off to war. So Gellert stands in line and thinks of freedom and boundless power, juggling hexes in his head.  
  
Later in his quarters when he’s cold he pulls the generated heat from inside the walls into his hands, shaking with the effort and the thrill, making mental notes of density and texture, a reminder to himself to study further how all matter is put together.    
  
On his own he dives into the history books and he spots magical presence everywhere; he reads Muggle literature and finds that even the Muggles are obsessed with magical energy. Chemistry, physics, mathematics: there’s a scientific dimension even to magic and he’s not foolish enough to diminish it. Theology, poetry, philosophy; all of it deals with the power in that which cannot be seen, cannot be measured. He devours it, page after page, book after book. It saves his sanity for the first two years at Durmstrang, keeps him sustained, _breathing_.  
  
There’s no use talking to the others about it; he makes no friends at school. Quite a few of his fellow students seem to fear him or find other reasons to keep their distance. In his fourth year there’s a small group of three boys and a girl who approaches him - quietly at first, very discreetly because his reputation is carved into the heavy walls here. _We heard that you experiment with the dark arts_. As though it's his purpose to darken the magic he uses, as though he’s banal enough to seek only dominance or destruction. Gellert bites his tongue and explains. At first he actually tries to _explain_ what it is that he means, what it is that he Sees.  
  
He explains that the Muggles will break the world in their foolish quests for powers never meant for them. That the air will be polluted and the oceans will turn black and that they were not intended for such arrogance, such ambition. That they ought to submit to their true masters the way humans have always submitted to their betters or died opposing them.    
  
He explains that he doesn’t want for them to die. Not all of them, not necessarily even a _lot_ of them. Most he believes will serve a true purpose somewhere.  
  
He explains the significance of the unexplained and unspoken - that the whole universe is imploding from the weight of it all and he wants to trace its roots to the corners of the earth, lift them up, consume them for himself.  
  
There _are_ no corners to the earth, one of the boys corrects him. A dutiful boy. Such an ideal little wizard, stern and glum like the castle he’s trained in. It takes all the self-control Gellert possesses not to jinx the brat into oblivion.  
  
But the boy is not the only one, that is the way of them all. It’s a pattern he’s overly familiar with by now.  
  
Durmstrang picks them off one by one, grabs the living boys and molds them into a grey _nothing_ .  
  
Gellert can’t even bother to find excuses for what he eventually tricks the brave little group of students into doing for him. They are too naive, too unimaginative to have the faintest idea even as he explains the experiments to them. They deserve their fates.  
  
When they expel him he argues halfheartedly for twenty minutes - he counts them in his head, wants to chronicle his achievements or lack thereof - that he’s never done anything lethal, that they were all giving consent, that his intention had never been to hurt.  
  
“Merely to improve,” he explains to Headmaster Frigg who looks somewhere above Gellert, at a fixed spot over his right shoulder. “I believe the source of our magic could be infinite.”  
  
“Nothing is infinite, Gellert.”  
  
“But you’re _wrong_ about that! Look at the Muggles, look at what they accomplish with so little - imagine what we could do if we did not strive to contain our powers.”  
  
“Controlling is not the same thing as _containing_ ,” Frigg protests but Gellert can hear the doubt in his voice. Nothing much, merely a shade of possibility that the old fool might see reason. A glint in the corners of his eyes, the way he opens his mouth and closes it again without a word.  
  
_Doubt._  
  
He keeps it in his chest as a trophy when he walks out of the castle for the last time. The Deathly Hallows look at him from the walls, a silent farewell to send him off.  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
It’s a long winter that year, almost _endless_.  
  
He travels to South Africa, to South America, to Iceland and Austria. Apparates wherever he can, takes a boat or a train to see the sights, packs books and treasures and sleeps at various inns along the way. Wherever he goes he speaks to the local wizards, asks about things worth seeing, people worth meeting. There’s an echoing freedom in him now that Durmstrang has disappeared - quite literally so, they have erased all memory of its location from his mind, removed themselves from his inner maps - and he can feel his own power expand, extract from one place to another almost at will.  
  
And he learns so much his head _sings._  
  
He learns of the eggshells that had trapped dark magic in Sardis after an earthquake had wrecked the ancient city. Muggles had excavated the old ruins to find still-breathing wards against the dark, its magic fading out into the mundane world but still there, tangible to those skilled enough to sense it. The medieval city in France where Muggle monks had concealed a whole community of witches whose magic had fuelled the entire society. He hears about legendary weapons forged before the dawn of civilisation and wands that have existed so long they pre-date the written accounts. When he learns about the Deathly Hallows - the first mention of them outside of old books takes place in a seedy pub in northern Iceland where a witch dealing in dragon eggs is trying to sell him one for over an hour - he knows that this is the path he must take now.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
So finally, after two years of travels and legends, he stands in a graveyard in Godric’s Hollow and it’s summer, _finally_ summer. His tunic is damp against his back, his scalp is hot under the wild mane of hair that he hasn’t seen any reason to tend to recently.  
  
“You look like a bloody lion,” Bathilda mutters that morning before serving him breakfast, moving closer as though wanting to sort out the strands, smooth him out. Nobody has touched him in a very long time; he holds his breath, waits for her to restrain herself and wonders if he would have liked it, being petted like a small child or an animal. She clears her throat, lowers her hands again.    
  
“There’s a boy your age here,” she tells him instead. “Immensely clever wizard. You’d like him.”  
  
Gellert nods, hums something back while immersing himself in the Daily Prophet that his great-aunt insists on having in her home though it appears to have very little worth for a reasonably intelligent person. Muggle-compliant nonsense, outrageous gossip and meek articles arguing for or against pointless reforms that all agree with the Statue of Secrecy.  
  
Such high hopes for Britain and so far he is disappointed.  
  
And then, a short while later, Albus Dumbledore stands before him, all brilliance and naked power.  
  
“You won’t find the Hallows here,” he says levelly but his voice is thick with anticipation.  
  
“You know about the Hallows?”  
  
“Of course I do.”  
  
There’s something very young about him - Gellert is certain he isn’t much older but he’s never been young, not in his _heart_ \- but his eyes are ancient, worldly. That impression is interrupted by his voice, however, by the way he wears his emotions visible on his skin that looks almost golden in the heavy beat from the sun. They dance there, Gellert thinks hazily, dance like thestrals and he catches himself desiring to press a kiss to the other boy’s mouth to see if he tastes of it. _Kiss_ him, like one would kiss a lover and oh, what a lover Albus would make! He’s made like a sculpture of an angel, something from an idealised painting, his body and face in painful, harsh symmetry and there’s such strength to it, to the perfect form. As if the power inside him has altered his outside, broken through the surface.  
  
He’s _shivering_ with it, the kind of magic Gellert has sought all his life.  
  
Albus who suddenly talks without pause as though he has been waiting - he practically _bursts_ with held-back ideas, complaints, theories and aggressions; he talks about his father and his mother, about Ariana, about Hogwarts and the backwardness of the wizarding world, the meticulously slow and erratic progress it has made over the years and how it will never be _enough_ .  
  
“I know,” Gellert whispers into the humid air at the graveyard; he takes a step closer, then another one, his gaze fastened on Albus the whole time. “I _know_ .”  
  
Albus looks at him, smiling crookedly and something in Gellert snaps into place.


	2. The Fountain of Fair Fortune

_Pay me the treasures of your past._  
  
  
  
  
Summer is still quite cold when he first returns to Godric’s Hollow, his patched-up school bag over his shoulder and his wand safely tucked into the inner pocket of the purple wool coat that Aberforth thinks looks _stinking bloody mad_ but Albus is secretly quite proud of. He’d bought it in Hogsmeade during his sixth year and it looks the way butterbeer had tasted that day, full of promise and warmth and he had felt like a _man_ suddenly, had bought a very own piece of clothing for money awarded to him and then he had sat down with Elphias at the back of the Hog’s Head. Perhaps they had begun to feel the departure from Hogwarts in their bones already because Elphias had been solemn, too - but happy about it, opening himself up to the responsibilities of their future.  
  
Simpler for him, Albus thinks, to greet that sort of thing. Elphias with his inherited money and clean slate.  
  
The world ought to lie wide-open to them - the maps are still in his bag, scribbled full of notes and instructions, charting the places of power he would like to see - but instead of clutching his belongings while diving headlong into a Portkey to the historical streets of Greece, Albus trods the cobbled streets of this forsaken little town.  
  
As warped as it seems for someone in his position to long for a childhood that just passed he does, oh Merlin, he _does_. But mostly - and most surprisingly - it’s Hogwarts he misses.  
  
The castle has always offered protection without asking questions and Albus had felt a longing for it the very moment he walked out of those vast grounds where he’s spent seven years in some sort of happiness, had felt a slice of his chest cut open and bared to all kinds of hurt now that his home has been removed from him. His _only_ home unless he counts this wretched place and he can’t. Yes, he’s sentimental and nostalgic but grants himself the right to be. All things considered, this is a sacrifice and Albus Dumbledore is not a martyr.  
  
“Are you back to stay now?” Ariana asks, face beaming, and he forces away the irritation he always feels in her presence. Drives it back into himself. Drives out into the world, the muggle world that hates her and the wizarding world that would never break a sweat protecting her.  
  
A frustrated sigh escapes him. She won’t notice, she’s already on her way out to pick up some flowers or a tame bird.  
  
“I am,” he says all the same because there’s no point in hiding from the truth.    
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
It’s _torment_ to be back. Conjuring up tea and fruit when the clock by the kitchen makes a certain noise, setting the cleaning spells into motion, listening to his sister’s odd observations about the society she is not allowed to see. Her thoughts are all awry and Aberforth counters with his own idiocy, plays along in her childish charades but Albus won’t. _Can’t_. There’s even a physicality to his reluctance, a heavy sort of clumsiness that he is anything but familiar with: he is careless with the cooking spells and drops the plates on the table so small droplets of hot soup fall on Ariana’s dress, he forgets the spices when he makes stew and his pudding always carry a taste reminiscent of ashes. He tries quite earnestly but it’s no use.  
  
Aberforth rolls his eyes and bakes scones that smell of garlic and parsley.  
  
Ariana laughs at their brother when he serves her food, her face shifting entirely in his presence as though he is casting quiet magic around her. Albus tears his bread apart, thinking about transfiguration and alchemy, how he’d study both things in Athens where it’s said the very Parthenon rests on magical ground. Elphias has been talking of little else all year. There, in London when he had torn himself away from their mutual plans, it had seemed rational and fair and he strives to be both of those things. _Yes, our mother’s death is all about you, twat,_ Aberforth mocks him in his head.    
  
_Ariana_ . She’s everywhere, scattered across every thought he has here in Godric Hollow. He doesn’t know how to care for her, how to _think_ of her. It appears to come so easily for his brother and Albus fears for what it says about him that his instincts tell him to lock her away and seal the door with a thousand charms. He is ashamed when he spots his siblings in the garden or somewhere in the house: Ariana with her head in Aberforth’s lap while he gestures with his hands, apparently telling her a story; Aberforth tending to the small cuts on her hands that she receives from the rose bushes; Ariana pleading with them both to go out, down to the lake or to the market.    
  
Their mother would take her out every day. _Fresh air = calming. Stroll down to the water._ She’s written it in her diaries that she’s kept all over their house and nobody has had the heart to throw away since her death; she’s charted all the banalities of the village, chronicled her sons magical education, told her invisible audience about her daily chores - and he reads them at night, obsessively at times, trying to find some answers. Aberforth claims it doesn’t take a genial mind to understand what had happened to their family and he would know, Albus supposes, but he cannot accept that their mother would write such endless amounts of words for no other purpose than self-soothing, that she would not rather turn to rage - justified _rage_ at the oppression of her daughter’s natural talents.  
  
For years, Albus has tried to find ways to mend it. Devoured the Hogwarts library in search for cures.  
  
Cures first, then procedures that would remove her connection to her own magic entirely - a squib in nearly every sense, which is what many believe already.  
  
And eventually - when he is left with nothing - he wonders if the only way might be to seek means to control it, to contain _her_ .  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
“You can’t _have_ her.” Aberforth spits. He’s grown so tall. Albus can’t even remember a time when they were little; it seems their boyhood has been ground down to dust over the years. “She’s not your next subject in whatever quest you fools go on to get awards.”  
  
It hurts him to see what his brother thinks of him, what sort of creature he imagines Albus to be. _Hurts_ him but he can't find enough words to counter the description which pains him even worse.   
  
“It doesn’t work like that," he says. "Which you’d know if you only returned to Hogwarts-”  
  
“She’s my sister and she’s _suffering_ , don’t you dare use her for something you can be sanctimonious about, you bloody bastard.”  
  
“You take care of her then,” Albus counters. Behind them, the stars are out and upstairs their sister sleeps. They ought to keep their voices down. “If you think you can. I don’t, but there you go.”  
  
“We manage fine without mother and without you.” His brother keeps his hands on hips as he stands in front of Albus now with that gaze that feels like stone. They look quite alike, people say, but Albus can’t see it, not like this.  
  
“If you manage so well, why weren’t you there when she killed mother?”  
  
Aberforth shoves him into the wall before he leaves the house, his parting hex scorching off a little slice of purple wool that lands softly on the floor between them.  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Albus _loves_ her. That's what makes everything about her so awful.  
  
One of the first days of summer the two of them spend sprawled on blankets out in the garden. He lets her play with his hair, sits meekly by the table in the small garden where she and Aberforth grow beets and sugar snaps like a pair of old Muggles. Perhaps he shall join them in their ridiculous efforts, plant mandrake and dragon roots, attempt to refine that dry little patch into potions ingredients so he can finally finish his experimentation with healing potions that he has barely had time to consider lately. If nothing else he could feed them to the goats, see what happens. That’s how the Muggles do their experimenting after all, subjecting innocent animals to all sorts of diseases to stuff them full of possible antidotes. Distasteful and cruel but they get away with it, the way Muggles do.  
  
He reads to her later in the garden. Reads essays he’s written for _Transfiguration Today_ \- Aberforth sighs loudly as he walks past them, asks acidly if Albus’s ego could grow any larger - since she likes the idea of shapeshifting. Reads Muggle literature, books that Miss Bagshot leaves for them at irregular intervals. Reads poetry that Ariana doesn’t seem to appreciate but that brings tears to Albus’s own eyes as he recites the verses. Reads anything that their mother has not read, avoiding all traces that leads back.  
  
_“I saw pale kings and princes, too_  
_Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;_  
_They cried - ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci_  
_Thee hath in a thrall!’”_  
  
The rhythm of Keats seems to fall into his chest this summer, words beating in there just over his heart. He can’t explain why. He knows the Muggles think he was one of them and he knows they were wrong, has seen Keats' wand depicted in his Muggle Studies textbooks. It matters to him.   
  
“I must go fetch some things from the village,” he says, clearing his throat. “Go inside to Aberforth.”  
  
Ariana looks up at him, wide-eyed and smiling, braiding a four-leaf clover into his hair for luck before she runs off.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
One of the first days of summer he locks the door behind him and walks - slowly, without true purpose in his steps - into the rest of his life.  
  
The boy standing between the final resting places of Isolde Potter and Pereniell Black has a magic that shatters the elements around him. A gentle but ever-present movement in the air, like it's a part of the landscape itself and no more invasive than the rustling of leaves or the act of throwing a stone into the lake. A presence, a _mark_. Albus stands a few feet away at first, merely observing it and wondering if the other boy is aware. Then their eyes meet over one of the highest gravestones and he finds that yes, oh yes he _is_. He doesn't know what in Merlin's name he will talk to him about; he knows that he must talk to him about anything, _everything_.   
  
"I've seen your picture in the newspapers," the boy says before Albus has conjured up a single syllable. "You're _brilliant_."  
  
There’s a boy in the graveyard, nothing more extraordinary than that.  
  
There’s a boy in the graveyard and he cracks the universe open.

 


	3. Lion-mettled

_Be lion-mettled, proud;_ _  
_ _and take no care who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are_

**Macbeth**

  
  
  
  
That summer is a heartbeat; that summer is a lifetime.  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Half an hour after Albus first meets him, Gellert Grindelwald summons pears and plums from a nearby orchard while Albus opens the locked door to the church and then they spend the evening hiding in there, slumped behind the altar like prodigal sons. Albus finds bottles of communion wine that they break open, laughing as their hands become stained red from wine, purple from fruit. The stains prove difficult to remove once they have sunk into their skins and their shirts which it does despite muttered cleaning spells under their breaths.  
  
“Out damned spot! _Out_ \- I say!” Gellert recites and Albus stares at him, fascinated and surprised in equal measures and what an unfamiliar thrill _that_ is.  
  
“They provide you with Muggle literature at Durmstrang?”  
  
“It’s not _prohibited_.” He looks around for glasses but gives up and takes a few swigs straight from the bottle before handing it over to Albus, grinning. There’s a spark at the bottom of his gaze that feels like standing near a furnace. “Is it at Hogwarts?”  
  
Albus shakes his head and takes the bottle. He’s careful not to touch the hand that’s holding it and Gellert seems to notice which brings a flush to Albus’s cheeks. An odd moment for shyness, perhaps, given how the scene is such a light-hearted, almost _incredible_ moment that appears sliced out of the fabric of time itself, handed to the both of them. A reward, he thinks and meets Gellert’s gaze. For something he has yet to deserve. Shyness in the face of _that_ cannot be overly unexpected.  
  
“We read a fair bit of it for Muggle Studies,” he manages to elaborate.  
  
“Muggle studies.” One raised eyebrow and the hint of a smirk. “That sounds so dreadfully bleak.”  
  
“Quite dull, indeed.” That is not a lie. Two years into his education at Hogwarts and Albus had made himself known as someone who’d set his own quill to poke him every five minutes to refrain himself from drifting off during the more theoretical subjects. Drifting off or falling too deep into his own side studies that he had always conducted more or less openly, a second set of books in his lap or on the floor, his mind a perfectly organised source of power. _  
_  
“Durmstrang has non-magical orientation classes.” Gellert chews a ripe plum and Albus tries to picture him as a student, in the castle he’s never visited but heard so many things about. Only good that ever came out of Durmstrang were a few Quidditch players, they say, other than that it’s just a place for dark wizards and darker arts but _they_ say so much downright ignorant hogwash, too. Albus would like to think he’s more open-minded than others, less prone to needless borders between the magical arts. “History and politics. Governing. Very _strategical_. I recall there _was_ a possibility of taking Non-Magical Culture, too. Muggle philosophy and literature. All that nonsense. I looked up the required reading, of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Albus says because he thinks he understands exactly what _that_ means at least and suddenly he can see Gellert at Durmstrang, sitting in the classroom in the same fashion as Albus had at first, resting his head in his hand, so utterly _alien_ to the rest of the class. It’s an outline to the body, he has thought on occasion. A portent or a magical signature marking them, those who are too unevenly created to sink into the straight lines of other people.    
  
Something tells him Gellert Grindelwald would know _precisely_.  
  
“Naturally it’s not for those with pure intent,” he adds with a wicked sideways glance that seems to land in Albus’s midsection. “It was considered eccentric at Durmstrang. Even _perverted_.”  
  
He speaks the last word as intimately as a spell, each letter rolling off his tongue with precision.  
  
Albus stares at the bottle in his hands. His mouth is dry; he drinks greedily from the wine, drinks until it has loosened the last knot behind his bones.  
  
Night falls around them: in the cloudless sky star after star is lit and they can see them from the large windows, can pretend they make out what constellation that looks at them from behind the blue-tinted glass or right by the curved arch of the window near the entrance; after another bottle of stolen wine it _blurs_ and they talk about the Hallows, about graves and death. The dimensions appear to have been altered here, morphed into each other and allowed the dead to return to them, haunt their conversation.  
  
“My mother recently died,” Albus confesses.  
  
“My condolences.” Gellert reaches for the bottle that stands on the floor between them. He doesn’t look half as unsteady as Albus feels but perhaps they practice more intensely how to hold one’s liquor over at Durmstrang. The thought amuses him. “I never met mine.”  
  
“What about your father?”  
  
Why does he want to know? Albus frowns to himself, scrutinizing the seams of his shoes. He isn’t even certain he knows where Elphias grew up or if he has any brothers or sisters. It has never occurred to him to ask. _You live your life in your own head, don’t you?_ His Head of House had looked at him with a smirk the third spring they had spent at Hogwarts and the castle grounds had been swarming with giggling students and silly pranks, long hair finally let out into the sunlight and glasses mysteriously disappearing into pockets. They had all been preeing, bird-like in their efforts. And Albus had been sitting cross-legged in a window sill, practicing charms on the budding flowers of a nearby bush - he remembers it because he had made a whole nebula of yellow lilies bloom mid-air before Elphias had disturbed him by asking something or telling him about Mirella Hogswin’s whereabouts.  
  
“My father? Oh, him I met,” Gellert says in a different tone; Albus notices every shift, all the rises and falls. There are so many unspoken questions resting at the back of his tongue. Such endless supply of quiet little conversations in his head that he makes notes to remember.    
  
This peculiar, wondrous boy is a cure for an ailment he only vaguely knew existed before now - soothing a loneliness he’s been born with. Now that he stands here with the discovery he also realises that it might very well break his heart.  
  
Knows, too, that he will let it.  
  
When he returns home Ariana is asleep in her chambers and Aberforth sits by the kitchen table, staring at Albus who is, _admittedly_ , slightly more than a little tipsy as he climbs the stairs up to his bed and falls back on it, mouth open and heart still hammering wild and _free_ in his chest.    
  
  
  
*  
  
  
The following morning it rains heavily and Gellert stands outside Albus’s window by dawn, huddled in his cloak and surrounded by a water-repellent sphere that sings of magic, sings in that special way his powers _do_ , a low hum in the very air.  
  
“I have been thinking about the Hallows,” he says when they stand in the garden, both of them fitting inside the dry spot. There is magic dancing back and forth between them, bouncing off the raindrops and leaping from the puddles on the ground and Gellert runs a hand through his hair, a quick smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Uh. But mostly about what you said about the trans-species transformation. I think maybe you’re incorrect.”  
  
Albus grins into the rain clouds. “Oh, I’m most certainly _not_.”  
  
“Prove it.”  
  
“Gladly.”  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
That summer is a heartbeat; that summer is a lifetime.  
  
Three days pass and they feel like forever yet they are over in the blink of an eye. Albus thinks of seven years at Hogwarts, thinks of the myriad of students coming and going there, all the conversations he’s had about nothing in particular, nothing of it profound enough to _linger_. Even Elphias is a friendship founded on compassion more than anything else - compassion for Albus who is an oddball and for Elphias who is kind and brave but certainly no intellectual giant. A dear friend but for simple reason.  
  
And then this slice out of time itself, this absurd little moment that stretches out around them.  
  
There is nothing quite like this in all of Albus’s memory, even as a fantasy it would have seemed absurd.  
  
They bring books to the lake in the afternoons, read them out loud to each other and quickly, quietly in their own heads. Gellert quotes dubious passages from old and already disproved prophecy texts that he’s found in Bathilda Bagshot’s attic, Albus laughs at the presentation of transmutation in one of the Durmstrang spellbooks, they both delight in old incantations and charms, traces the the roots of all the spells they know by heart. Someone has invented it, once. Everything they know someone has discovered.  
  
“Imagine what the two of us will do,” Gellert says. His thumb runs over the ragged front page of _Alchemical Essences_ , when he scrapes gently with his nail on its side it makes a low rumble. Miss Bagshot clearly cares enough about her books to curse them; Albus decides this is what will ultimately lead to him liking the lady next door. “For the world.”  
  
He glances out over the water and thinks about war. Muggles and their wars, their incessant, bloody wars about territory and power, kings and gold. He wonders what they aim to do with all the colonies, every scrap of land they steal from others. He wonders what it will all lead to, if they even have a purpose behind the fighting or if they are merely fighting the same haphazard way children are playing: obsessively, joyously, like a force radiating out of their bodies. They’re mobilizing in South Africa, the _Prophet_ tells him; British Muggles are marching there, weapons readied and authorities applauding while thousands of wizards are fleeing before the ministry bans magical travel out of the country. Which they _will_ , because the ministry kneels so easily and as soon as the wretched Muggles has started one of their wars they will secure all borders so that nobody can escape the hell they create. _They’re animals, Kendra, they won’t understand -_ _  
_  
“Yes,” he agrees and looks at Gellert over the book he’s reading - arithmancy, a recent article about its apparent pitfalls and hidden possibilities - and right into his burning eyes. “We _will_ change it. We have to.”  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
They run up to the hill above the village, run down into the deep valley beneath it and practice elemental magic until their bodies shake. Gellert knows things that Albus craves for himself with a force that shocks him though of course it shouldn’t; he throws his wand on the grass and holds the rain in between his outstretched hands for a moment and Albus stares at him, mirrors his movements in his head and considers how he, too, would be able to stretch his knowledge of everything if he just managed to bend the elements a little bit further.  
  
“I’ll show you.”  
  
Gellert takes his hands then, stands behind him and guides him. There is no distance left between their bodies, no breach to their minds and Albus gasps into the joined vision of the landscape. It explodes in front of his eyes and he gasps - almost chokes - at the force with which he can suddenly experience everything before the presence of the other wizard slowly fades away into the background. He misses it when it’s gone.

He’s generous with his knowledge, abundant with his magic.  
  
And his affection, Albus thinks and feels his face flush red, his affection feels like nothing else in the world.  
  
They test themselves - not necessarily to establish their positions but to manifest a connection, to join their massive, precocious forces and throw them back into a universe that seems to _tremble_ before them.    
  
Gellert’s powers are located in his mind, Albus’s powers are in his heart; that is how they learn to think of it during practice, how he learns to think of himself as a Gryffindor after all, long overdue. That is how they move around and against each other in circles, let their spells clash and their ambitions collide. Gellert charges, Albus controls. Gellert’s patience for numbers, for the mathematics of magic is infinite - he calculates and attacks in patterns; Albus brilliance lies in an almost mad creativity that roars in his body and travels outside of it, forms the most beautifully dangerous creations, both unpredictable and lethal.  
  
There are differences - vast, brutal, _uncompromising_ \- but the summer is young around them, it forgives all of their trespasses so they can forgive each other in turn.    
  
Right by the lake Gellert attempts to tear down the elements in an aggressive chain of spells that whip through the air. The clouds crack, rain pours out and they both laugh in disbelief and pride.  
  
He’s magnificent but overly confident; Albus notices it almost immediately upon casting his own large-scale Transfiguration that whips up a portion of the lake mid-air. Gellert’s scope is massive, his aim is wide and for a few glorious seconds - shaking with magic, sparks of it coming off him in waves where he stands - he can hold what appears to be the sky itself between his wand and his body.  
  
Then the spell snaps, ultimately sending him into the water in an undignified display of lost control. Albus makes mental notes as he watches, a perpetual student or a teacher in the making, unable to avert his gaze. Gellert is overstretching the boundaries, he knows. Disregarding the limits for both magic and matter. It sets the weight of what you cast entirely off balance.  
  
Unable to resist a demonstration of his own mastery, Albus lets his water formation leap over their heads like thestrals before he’s gently sweeping it down by his new friend who skulks up from the lake. As the spell moves past him he stops, his mouth slightly open and his face pale; he moves slowly, as if he’s considering something with each step and the full scope of him like that is marvellous - a  _disheveled_ kind of glory that hits Albus like an Unforgivable somewhere between his ribs. He stares without words as something dawns in the more obscure nooks in his mind - the sound of something that used to be muted, a proper word for what he has barely guessed the name of.  
  
There’a a burning urgency in his eyes when their eyes meet next, a kind of awe that twists in Albus’s stomach.  
  
“Teach me,” he says and the question is swallowed by the sheer force behind his words. He reaches for Albus’s wrists, wraps his long fingers around them and pulls him closer. And Albus stumbles slightly, close enough for his palm to touch Gellert’s chest as he regains his footing in the waterside. " _Please._ ”  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  
That summer is a heartbeat; that summer is a lifetime.  
  
That summer is the only one - in a life so ridiculously full of them - that he will remember up in the highest tower of Nurmengard.  
  
Above all, he thinks now as they are sitting underneath the large oak just outside the town square in Godric’s Hollow, he will remember Albus Dumbledore. The boy he was, the man he will become. Time is immeasurable to a Seer.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
He will remember this:  
  
Albus’s shoulders, the way they are slumped as he reads his book, scribbling notes in the margins with little care for the actual owner of said book - Gellert, as it happens. His hands working away, small cuts and grazes scattered across the backs - from experimenting with alchemy, most likely, or helping his simple-minded siblings with the garden. The back of his head, entirely covered in golden auburn hair that is so thick it radiates heat; he thinks about burying his fingers in there, about twisting them until Albus’s face is turned up, into his own gaze, his hunger. The curve of his profile, his nose long and proud and freckled. The line of his jaw disappearing into the half-open shirt where Gellert knows there are harsh curls of reddish hair covering his heart, that vulnerable spot in his chest where the bones merge and part ways.  
  
Albus takes notes for an idea he has had since this morning, a half-finished thought that has traveled between them all day. He taps his quill in between words. Soft thuds, rising like a rhythm.  
  
Gellert reads Muggles this week, eats ridiculous sweet treats from these British isles and reads about natural laws and the absence thereof, about numbers and morals. It’s not bad, far from it, especially considering its origin. _It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong._ He nods to himself.  
  
“What does he say, your philosopher?” Albus glances sideways at him, brushing away a strand of his hair. It’s still wet from practicing magic in the lake, still carries both sand and sun and Gellert breathes it in. Has he ever been captured by another human being before? He tries to remember all the unimportant faces of his past, every meaningless acquaintance or half-formed friendship from history but there is nothing that floats to the surface. No one. They say his father loved his mother until it drove them both to insanity; they say he would roam the streets after her death, searching for her in the face of every witch, every innkeeper along the way.   
  
It's utterly  _pathetic_ ; he understands it better, now.   
  
“Oh, he’s wordy,” he says.    
  
A chuckle. “That is unfortunately not a trait reserved for Muggles.”  
  
He flips through the pages, distracted yet oddly focused. He holds Albus’s gaze, lets one hand slowly brush through the warm grass below them while the other holds the book, forges it like a wand in their air.   
  
“Desire,” he reads. “Is an amatory impulse of the inmost human parts.”  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
He will remember this:  
  
How even the Hallows pale in the shadow of the great oak, as Albus's arms reach for him, his hands around Gellert’s face and his own eventually allowed to run through auburn curls and over sun-touched skin as their mouths open in disbelief and then finally _, improbably_ they kiss.  
  
Albus tastes of honey and fire and it will burn them both to ashes.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- The Muggle they're reading this time is Bentham. 
> 
> \-- Thank you all for reading and commenting! I had no idea I had so many words about these two and even less of an idea that people would want to read them. I appreciate it very much!


	4. What branches grow

_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow_  
 _Out of this stony rubbish?_  
**\-- The Waste Land, T.S Eliot**  


* * *

  
  
  
He Sees his father’s death fifty times over before it happens.  
  
Once he Sees it in the shape of a magical accident: a bouncing curse, a hoarse scream followed by blood splattered on the walls for _days_ before the cleaners can get it out. Gellert is four. Some nights afterwards he dreams about the vision but he cannot remember waking up scared or even sad. Perhaps it says something about him; perhaps it says more about his father.  
  
Several times he Sees it as an ordinary death, an old man paling against his sheets, sinking gently into the bottomless sleep. It doesn’t sit right with him, that vision. Feels too meek, much too kind for a man like Gerhard Grindelwald.  
  
It happens, too, that it’s shown to him as a chosen path, a rational choice made by a rational man. A rope around a neck, a lethal potion, a cracked skull on a stone floor. A coward’s escape.  
  
The Sight falters, _shakes_ like the flames in a fireplace. A heap of broken images but even as a child he knows there are truths at the heart of it all, a hard core of premonition among all the possible outcomes of every step taken. Later he will learn to control it, but he’s so very young and it’s still no more than an emotional impulse quavering through him like a sob or a strange sort of laughter.  
  
When he finally sees his father’s dead body he’s nine and the green shimmer around it lingers on the dirty street.  
  
They are travelling through Scandinavia in search of something unspoken - artifacts, mythological treasures, bloodlines - and father barely even looks at him, his face buried in maps and books and his voice harder than usual. And then he dies. _Fast_ , as though he is in a hurry even then, rushing to escape life. The perpetrators are gone before he’s even fallen to the ground.  
  
Gellert kneels beside him on the street thinking this moment right now might mark the first time he has studied this man’s face properly and earnestly, tried to trace his own appearance back to the chiseled features. He’s never wanted to before - besides, they all tell him he looks just like his mother. Tell him she was a _devastating beauty_ , whatever that is supposed to mean. A beautiful Seer from the north, a powerful witch who did not survive childbirth. Of course, Gellert never trusts what he is told; people tend to lie.  
  
The investigators speak of duels and dark arts, of politically motivated murder; a young woman among them wraps her arm around Gellert’s shoulders, whispering words of comfort to him under her breath. All the journey back to warmth and safety she whispers, like a song or the sound of wind.  
  
He remembers it more than he remembers anything else from that fateful night, from that fateful childhood.  
  
A warm breath against his skull: _everything will be alright. Stackars liten._  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
For years after his father’s death his Vision is a dull thing, a mere shadow sitting in the corners of his imagination.  
  
At Durmstrang he Sees the future - scattered scenes, terrible outcomes, the shattering of the Earth - and learns how to see at will, commanding the power that has been given to him. The thrill is indescribable but the things he sees are haunting him in his dreams. He sees the grand scope of things clear and sharp yet the details and the people - both the important ones and the fools in the background - all merge together to a blurred painting.  
  
During his travels he meets a Seer in Albania who puts her fingertips to his head and smiles as she speaks to him of ancient knowledge, of black drapes carrying his signature and of wars, long wars that won’t spare what he tries to save.  
  
“But you, _ah_ , you will survive everyone you love, boy.”  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
“What about the Muggle-borns?” Albus asks.  
  
The sun is low but still warm on their bared skin; Gellert shifts sand through one hand as he uses the other to absent-mindedly leaf through Albus’s mother’s old copy of _Wonderbook: Book of Spells_. It smells of dust, like the sand, but the words in it are beacons.  
  
“I don’t care about the Muggle-borns, Albus,” he says.  
  
That remark is met with an arched eyebrow and Albus turns his face towards him. _All_ of him, towards Gellert who cannot help but grin at the sight. The hair that has grown rapidly in the weeks they have known each other, paled in the sun and become a golden mane around that perfectly sculpted face.  
  
“What do you mean?” Albus sits up straight, pushes the hair back behind his ears and narrows his eyes.  
  
Gellert leaves the sand on the ground and lets his fingers trace birthmarks on Albus’s upper arm instead. There are veins there, running deep below the splashes of freckles, the markings of summer on his body. He recalls vividly how those patches of skin taste against his tongue, how Albus sounds when they kiss each other, what sort of movements he makes under Gellert’s hands. It’s not the first time he has felt attraction to a beautiful face or a powerful mind; it’s the first time he has felt _need_ like this. It’s a hunger, a thirst, an altering motion rooted deep within him. This is what motivates people far beyond fear, he understands it so wholeheartedly now. This is what it means to be human.    
  
“I mean - they have magic, yes?” Gellert hears his own voice, soft and airy. “They _are_ witches and wizards. Their problem, should they have one, lies within their loyalties, but if we could presume that those matters were taken care of then I see no difference between Muggle-borns and purebloods. Magic is magic. Blood is _base_. Trivial.”  
  
_I am not my father._ And he speaks the truth: he rarely considers Muggle-borns, has to remind himself they exist in plentiful numbers here on this island.  
  
Albus’s expression shifts slightly before he nods. His gaze follows Gellert’s hand and its slow pursuits, follows the quiet journey from arm to neck, then up towards the plump lips that he has kissed until they tastes of blood.  
  
“We need to clarify this,” Albus says.  
  
“To the Muggles?”  
  
Albus looks serious, nods slowly again. “To everyone.”  
  
“You’re right.”  
  
There are several things he previously hasn’t thought of, Albus makes him realise that. Plenty of considerations to take into account. Already he knows that he’d never dismiss something that Albus says and not only because he’s powerful but because he is also gifted with a reserve that Gellert has never even _considered_.  
  
It would be simple and banal to call it weakness; he knows that reserve will be Albus’s greatest, most devastating source of strength in the decades to come, knows his command over himself is only going to grow with age.  
  
The _might_ he would have at his fingertips if those restraints were gone Gellert thinks as they kiss in the sand that quickly cools around them when the sun sets. The sheer amount of magic the two of them would possess, the weight of it could crush every future where they are not victorious and he can see it quite clearly without Seeing it as Albus moves closer, his mouth mapping the outline of Gellert’s throat.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
At Durmstrang he learns that the Sight is rare, too rare, even, to be the subject of any substantial research that can be passed on at wizarding schools. He Sees the ways the world will end, sees the Muggles travel to the stars and back again without having learned anything of importance and everything around him is coloured by this knowledge, this dark secret that makes him devastatingly, mind-breakingly _alone_ .  
  
He would not give it up for anything in the world.  
  
During his travels he learns that there are ways to improve the Sight and control it, dark arts to enhance it and paler arts to contain it. He finds its connections to arithmancy and Muggle mathematics, to transfiguration and wandlore, takes names and remembers locations, makes his own map of future travels.  
  
At Godric’s Hollow he meets a boy that shines like the sun and he’s a _distraction_ from the Hallows that are, in turn, distractions from the greater cause for the greater good - but Gellert knows a beacon when he sees one.  
  
  
  
*  


“Swear you will never use it on me.” Albus is solemn and magnificent - oh, Gellert wants him until he cannot _breathe_ in moments like these, without that easy smile tugging at the corners of his mouth; loves him best when he’s a darker shade of himself with every achingly beautiful feature smoothed out -  where he stands by the window. “If I am to help you practice Legilimency.”  
  
“I swear,” Gellert replies without hesitation.    
  
“Very well,” Albus says. And opens his mind willingly.  
  
Gellert inhales sharply. Closes his eyes and _falls_ .  
  
He knows his own mind. Knows it intimately, obsessively after a long childhood with himself as sole company. It’s an amazing creation: full of endless labyrinths and tangled knots of powers yet to be released, complex thoughts he will complete with more experience, emotions that he’s buried and emotions he’s allowed himself and will return to, again and again; he knows its corners and cul-de-sacs, its terrors and weaknesses, his underlying, overwhelming _Heimweh_. This is how he knows he will be among the chosen few that go down in history. Not because he is the greatest wizard - he is not, Albus is already his superior and there will certainly be others yet more skillful to come - but because he knows himself and his place in the future, any future. Few men can claim the same.

Albus’s mind is a wonder, just like he would have expected. A masterpiece made of raw brilliance and hard-earned knowledge, so much knowledge already and Gellert almost fears the man he will become in twenty years, in _fifty_ . There are sharp edges to his mind - knife-bladed thoughts swirling past him and a pitch-black melancholy that hits Gellert with full force, makes him want to avert his senses because it hurts - but the _light_ of it is overwhelming. He’s got a mind like treacle, like swarming, singing healing potions aiming for Gellert’s heart and he pulls away, nearly shy with how willingly he’s welcomed in there. How much he wants to stay.  

_You cannot fathom how you move me. You don’t understand how beautiful you are._

The thoughts slip out of him before he’s found the momentum to close himself, he can tell by the way Albus’s face softens.  
  
_Show me?_ He asks the question in his mind and Gellert feels his own eyes widen, his mouth half-open as Albus gently pries his way in between his well-organised thoughts and slightly more chaotic feelings. His Legilimency is as sharply defined as the rest of his powers, a persuasive bolt of force that Gellert doesn’t have the skill yet to evade.  
  
He finds that he doesn't want to.   
  
_You’re in my soul now_ Gellert thinks and he is, he _is_. There’s a passage between them, a tunnel of ideas and thoughts and memories - _visions_ , as Gellert tries to show Albus what he’s been talking about this summer, what he’s known since he was a child. The crowded, urgent terrors of their lives, the heady pleasures and all the possible achievements of the wizarding community, of the human race, of the two of them standing here. He tries to show the future but he knows the past slips past his hapless defenses as memories of his father surface and something endlessly warm appears in Albus’s own thoughts. Then the future breaks through again, all blazing light and cracking darkness, things for which there are no names.  
  
_Are you afraid?_  
  
Albus shakes his head. His gaze travels as deep into Gellert’s mind as his spellwork, circling gentle and calm around the threats and triumphs, around the scattered fragments of the boys they used to be and everything that ever hurt them. And then finally, eventually Gellert tears himself away, and he’s grateful for the fact that Albus doesn’t return the question.  


  
*  
  
  
In Godric’s Hollow Gellert Sees them all, every outcome of their reign.  
  
In every one of them Gellert rises to the high heavens with his magic, his powers like an enchanted blade that cuts through the crowds.  
  
In every one of them, the world will learn his name.    
  
In every one of them Albus is there to subjugate and overpower, determinate once and for all who is the better man.   
  
In every one of them, Gellert submits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Gellert meets a Swedish witch who calls him "stackars liten", which means "you poor little thing." Pretty sure nobody has ever called him that ever since. ;)


	5. Lost ones

__ Tell me, lost ones: When  
the moon melts, what  
will we do with all that gold?   
  
[\--Mångata - Cathie Sandstrom](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/mangata)   


 

 ___

  
  
  
  
They are children once, huddled together in a narrow bed as their mother reads them to sleep.    
  
The constellation is always the same: on each side of mother are Albus and Aberforth - roughly the same size despite being two years apart, both of them skinny and tall, like snakes wrapped around the bedclothes and waging a quiet battle for space. Little Ariana in mother’s arms, her head tilted to see the book even though she cannot read the words.    
  
Albus always points it out, Aberforth shushes him.    
  
And mother’s voice: crisp and clear, soft-spoken. No matter how much Aberforth fusses or how often Ariana interrupts. This is the only moment during the day when she is gentle enough to withstand everything,  _ anything _ . Albus wishes, though he doesn’t say because it shames him, that he could have these moment with their mother for himself.     
  
They are children once and Ariana dreams of mythical creatures and endless gardens, carries flowers in her dress and spreads them out all over her bed like a scattered, ever-growing image of something she will one day talk about. Every night she is allowed to pick the tale in The tales of Beetle the Bard and she chooses the same every night for a year until even mother tires of Babbitty Rabbitty and her cackling stump.    
  
And Aberforth wants to be an adventurer on a salt-crusted ship headed for the far edges of the world. He’s a practical sort, dreams of hard work and experiences to add on a pile, doesn’t want to change anything beyond what sort of hat he will wear or what kind of juice he will drink in the morning. If he by Ariana's good graces and unlimited love is allowed to select their bedtime story he wants to hear about the Hopping Pot.   
  
Albus, on the other hand, pretends he’s Ignotus Peverell and in hindsight it is, of course, terribly ironic.    
  
  
  
*   
  
  
“Tell me about the minosaur!” Ariana demands, looking up at Albus with wide eyes and her mouth open in anticipation. She craves the myths behind her name, reaches for the Ariadne she was not even named after.    
  
“Mino _ taur _ ,” Aberforth corrects in that gentle tone he seems to have just for her. It annoys Albus more than he can even find words to express how his brother snaps and challenges, contradicts and argues, teasing mother and father with magic inside the house, pet animals under his bed, forbidden words tossed all over their kitchen. And then with their little sister, little meek Ariana, he’s transfigured into someone else. A special bond, father claims. It sounds odd but perhaps this is true.    
  
“Please Albus,  _ please _ ?”   
  
“If you learn how to read yourself, you can have the tale of the Minotaur as often as you like,” Albus says and looks down into his school books again. Theories about Arithmancy and Transfiguration; he starts Hogwarts next year, he must be properly prepared. Mother is Muggle-born after all, he is no stranger to the way people talk but Albus is going to prove everybody wrong.    
  
Aberforth scoffs. “She is not even six years old yet.”   
  
“I meant  _ you _ .”   
  
  
  
*   
  
  
Four months later and Albus reads by her bedside, reads almost in godless prayer to powers he has never believed in. Father is gone and mother rarely speaks anything beyond orders and reprimands any more but Aberforth claims Ariana wants to hear voices,  _ their  _ voices. So Albus reads.    
  
“The Minotaur was a creature-”   
  
He doesn’t say beast.  _ Beast  _ is for Muggle boys.    
  
“The Minotaur was a creature who lived at the centre of the great Labyrinth,” he reads.    
  
In almost every version of the myth, Ariadne is killed so he stops after the Minotaur, circles around the maze like the sacrificial victims of the story.    
  
He doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t know what to  _ do  _ and he finds that it infuriates him to a point where he begins to avoid her, instead.    
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
“She wants blueberry jam,” Aberforth says. In passing, as though it’s simply something that hoovers at the back of his mind and pops into his thoughts every now and then. “And not that cracked plate. She thinks it’s cursed.”   
  
“Her favourite goat is Mooncalf,” he says. “It’s taken a liking to her, too.”    
  
“You can’t talk to her about pogrebins,” he says. “She will never sleep and it will only upset her.”   
  
“Your new friend,” he says and there’s a shade of contempt in his tone, poison in the way he speaks the word  _ friend _ . “You’re not going to let him meet her, are you? You wouldn’t  _ dare _ , I hope.”   
  
  
  
  
*   
  


 

Gellert is introduced to Ariana on the seventh day of their friendship.    
  
It’s one of  _ those  _ days. Too heavy for duelling practice, too bright for shadowy research. The sun is practically tormenting them with its heat and Gellert pleads with Albus to come with him to London - just for a couple of days to pick up some books, get some knicknacks, check out a reference that might possibly be about the Hallows,  _ breathe some urban air _ \- and after Albus’s fifth decline he sighs and eventually lets the truth spill out of him.    
  
It’s such a relief. It shouldn’t be, it should feel like betrayal or  _ danger _ , letting the world see his sister for what she is but all he feels is a quiet, sad-tinged relief.    
  
“Hello, Ariana,” Gellert says softly. “I’m terribly pleased to meet you.”   
  
Albus stands in between them at first - stands in front of her or in front of  _ him,  _ after mother’s accident he is no longer certain of anything - looking from the floor and up into Gellert’s eyes that are full of curiosity, of calculating brilliance and then later something akin to pain. He sits very still beside her on the floor for a long time, looks at the drawings she makes and asks her polite questions about the books in her room.    
  
Has she read all of them?    
  
She has.    
  
Does she like to read?    
  
She does.    
  
He confesses to her that he did not learn how to read until quite late in his education, that other children made fun of him for being thick and ineducable and she frowns at that, scrutinizes his face for a moment before she smiles.  _ How silly of them. _ When she reaches out to touch his hair, he doesn’t even flinch and she makes a low, satisfied sound at the back of her throat.    
  
Gellert gives her his most devastating smile in return.   
  
  
*   
  
  
“I’m so sorry, Albus,” he says later when they are alone in Albus’s bedchamber and Aberforth has snatched Ariana away after insults and scowls, the threat of Aberforth’s fist breaking Geller’s  _ bloody nose, you mad twats _ .    
  
“No, I’m sorry. My brother is a dim-witted-”   
  
“I meant that I’m sorry for her.” Now his voice drops to a note that is so soft it makes Albus want to cry. Nobody knows about this, nobody has seen it and now he sits here and Gellert  _ knows  _ and it breaks everything apart. It splits his very heart. “And for  _ you _ .”   
  
“Ah,” he says, because it’s all he can think of.    
  
And Gellert’s mouth is soft and warm on his, his hands ghosting over everything that has broken since those Muggle boys devastated an innocent girl for no reason other than cruelty and for a little moment in time the universe is whole again. They kiss to prolong it, touch to cure it; Albus cradles Gellert's face, his shoulders, the flat planes of his stomach that looks like marble underneath the half-open window and tastes of sweat and spices. Gellert mutters his name like an incantation and it is, oh it is, and Albus thinks _I love you_ even though he knows he will never say it, knows it would be ruin.    
  
They allow themselves to fall asleep together for a short while before the sun goes down, two halves of a whole sewn together by strong hands that carry the weight of the world.   
  
  
*   
  
  
_ Everyone sees what you appear to be _ , Gellert states the following morning in a letter than arrives as Albus slowly crawls his way up from sleep.  _ Few experience what you really are. Machiavelli the Muggle said that once. It makes me think, Albus, about your dear sister. In some ways she is a gift, a treasure to our cause - she is honest and RAW. She is magic when it’s at its PUREST form and there is nothing in her that she should be forced to hide! Why should we conceal our nature when we have been so blessed? Let us save the world using her voice, Albus!  _   
  
  
*   
  
  
  
They are children once,  _ briefly _ , and Albus believes he can triumph over any adversary.     
  
He’s arrogant and invincible, he flies so very high. It follows that his fall must be brutal.    
  



	6. Fearful symmetry

  
There’s a boy at Durmstrang - one single spot of luminescence in a land of grey mediocrity - who can alter stone with a mere flicker of his mind. Never at will, at least not at first, the might is never truly under his _command_ but something wild and roaming. This lack of form is what draws Gellert to him, what makes the boy crack out of their surroundings and appear in all his fractured glory. He has a mind like acidic liquid - hot and furious, broken beyond repair - and a harsh line to his mouth. It happens sometimes that he walks out of the old fortress at night to practice his elemental command under the night sky; it happens sometimes that Gellert watches him with interest.     
  
His name is Makar and his eyes are greener than the grass beneath their feet as he closes them in concentration - and breaks the foot of the lowest mountain in the surroundings. The thunder around them is massive as he turns to Gellert and _grins_ , wickedly.   
  
They never meant to cause him any harm, neither of them.   
  
At least Gellert doesn’t think so whenever he allows himself to think about the heady days of experimenting up in the secluded towers of Durmstrang where the paintings would hiss and boo at their mere presence. _Inferior beings, how dare you taint these halls-_ he had silenced them with hexes he found last summer when father went away for a long time.   
  
Not harm, not exactly.   
  
The taste of his magic in that room, its tangled, dark web reaching everywhere. They say he had screamed for hours, until his voice broke and even then he had not stopped. Gellert hears the rumours in passing - nobody speaks to him at Durmstrang any more, not that they ever used to seek him out - and the meaning of them sends a brief chill down his spine. There are lines, he has learned as much. There are limitations to one’s exploration. _But that will bind us to the mundane_ , he protests in his own memory. _Forever doom us to be only as great as what men like you can imagine._  
  
“We sought only to understand,” he tells the Headmaster to no avail. “His powers are - were - immense, like nothing else-”  
  
But his words fall flat, caught up in the devastation.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
There’s a girl in Godric’s Hollow - a terrible secret in a miserable house - who can unleash her powers in lethal bursts of energy, laying waste to her surroundings with one flicker of her mind. Gellert senses her before he even knows about her existence, feels the misery in the air around them. Everyone does, he is certain of it, but who would dare prod at the deranged Dumbledore clan - one brutish thug and one brilliantly arrogant genius, both of them more dangerous than their sister, all things considered. Who would _dare_.   
  
“She never had a chance,” Albus says, in the shade below the large apple tree in their orchard. The only apple tree that still lives; the rest of them are skinny ghosts against the sky, carrying nothing but a few leaves and flowers that are too weak to bring forth any fruit. Lack of attention, insufficient care. Aunt Bathilda mutters about it under her breath, hates waste of all kinds and the Dumbledores manifest _all_ kinds.   
  
“It will be different.” Gellert turns page in his notebook, scribbles a few half-remembered details from the spellwork that got him banished from school.   
  
“How can it be?”   
  
“It will be,” he replies, too quickly, without pausing his writing. The letters appear quickly, the blue-tinted ink from his quill blotching only slightly at the curves.   
  
“Even if the whole universe alters, _she_ won’t change, Gellert.” There’s such bitterness in his voice and it slices through the humid summer air.   
  
Gellert looks up, meets a pair of heartbroken eyes and the expression in them _wounds_ him, disturbs something dormant within his body or his mind or perhaps even both. A low, distinct sound moving through his skull. He wants to comfort. Push everything else aside and grab Albus’s hands, his lovely face, those skinny shoulders that carry more freckles than there are stars in the sky. More than anything else he wants to soothe and console, brush over the hard truths with a lie or two and it terrifies him. Truth is _everything_ and he wants to spare Albus from it. It hardens something deep within, polishes thoughts into resolve.   
  
“You cannot change her,” Albus says a fortnight later. Better than anybody, he understands Gellert’s mind and its dark depths, its tangled mazes and - oh he would like to think so, still - sunny fields of brilliance. Better than anybody, Albus can foresee his plans. _Their_ plans, he thinks on a good day but today is not particularly agreeable; he can’t sense   
  
“You mean it has been impossible for other wizards.” Gellert’s thumb over a birthmark on Albus’s calf, his index finger scouting towards the knee. Even after a summer like this one, his skin is so pale. Like a child’s though Gellert knows that Albus, much like himself, cannot have been a very good child. Some children are perpetually misplaced, chafing against their surroundings. Minds unsuited for the mundane, bodies ill prepared for childhood games.   
  
“No, I mean I won’t allow it,” Albus retorts and his voice is a whip, hard and unyielding.   
  
He doesn’t hear the depths of Albus’s conviction then, or he hears but denies it; he doesn’t understand the particular way he will throw himself against Gellert’s vision. He doesn’t grasp the extent to which he will let him. Truth is everything but they grant themselves blindness under the pale afternoon sun.  
  
For a another little while - days, weeks, who can count something as slippery as time - they are still innocents.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
There’s a child in New York, in this terrible city that he despises, in this terrible nation where history is nothing but a faint whisper and the magic crackles like a subdued fire. But there’s a child here and Gellert chases it for months, keeps himself awake at nearly all hours to sense the source of this devastating magic that has rippled through the streets and torn apart the fragile shackles the fools have placed upon mages here.   
  
And when he finds him - oh, such a _wondrous_ creature he is in all his pathetic fear, all the cowering ways the Muggles have taught him. A surprise, at long last, both to be proven wrong and to stumble across something even better than he had anticipated. All the circles of the universe that close, every pattern completing itself; he can taste the future in a broken building and it’s tremendous.   
  
He _finds_ him but he slips out of reach and for a moment Gellert’s rage makes the city tremble.


End file.
